The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
As networking infrastructure becomes more widespread and increases in bandwidth, cloud computing has become increasingly popular. Cloud computing typically involves a corporation or other entity providing software, storage, and/or other computing resources to an end user over a network. Thus, the burden of maintaining, expanding, and updating computing resources is shifted away from the end user and to the cloud service provider. This, in turn, allows computing resources, such as software, to be offered to the end user as a service instead of as a product.
Cloud print services enable end users to print from any location to any network-connected printer. In a typical scenario, the network-connected printer is registered with the cloud print service for one or more user accounts. Once registered, the end user can then print to the network-connected printer from any location using any appropriate network device as long as they are logged on to their user account. Upon receiving print requests from the end user, the cloud print service immediately notifies the network-connected printer, and the network-connected printer starts printing.
Since cloud print services push print jobs immediately after submission, the delay between an end user submitting a job and the printer generating the printout is typically short. If the user is not physically present near the printer when the printout is ready, others may gain unauthorized access to the printout.